The Selfie Crowd!!!

That is what I called ourselves and most of others who ran the 5K this past weekend with us. My main aim was to not finish last. M and I put in a lot of effort to ensure that we were not the last two to roll to finish line and have everyone sympathetically clap for us. We made it in decent time. I wont ever say great...but we made it in at least before 400 others...so we are good.

The main motivation for the chocolate they promised if we finished the run. So we ran because we were getting food. Yes, not a great way to get back in shape. Four years ago when we ran our 5K, we were fit, we finished very fast and ran the whole darn thing. Last year, I kinda sorta ran the whole thing, this year...oh well...we ran walked it but we ran 2 miles of it. We paced ourselves because we had to and also because most of the 5K people walk and there is never enough space to run freely. Which is when I came up with the title...Selfie Crowd. All the 5K runners are typically selfie crowd. They come to pose, take photos, walk and have a good morning chat. They do this after paying close to $50 per person. Could they/we not have done it around our neighborhood? Uh, no!

If we someone would have the start and Finish air filled gateways near our house we might do it, so we could selfie first and then head out and selfie after we are done. If they had goodies everyday after our run/walk there would be more motivation. If our selfies could motivate others and make some feel J, we might do it...none of this happens...so we run 5Ks sponsored by chocolate companies or charities. We run so we can let the world know we are healthy, and make ourselves feel better that we are at least trying.

So, it was a fun weekend, as my bestie and I ran/walked the 5K, and finished with wiping off dripping melted chocolate from our faces we were proud. We were proud that even after a year of nothingness we could still do it without much fuss, we were proud that we made some use out of our Sunday morning. We were proud that we could make fresh promises of working out better and getting fit, We were proud that as we age, we were doing it in style. We were generally proud because that is who we are!!!

With love
From
Selfie ART

With Age Comes...

Maturity??? Ya right. I remember being mature at 18 when I had to choose a career path, at 22 when I had to choose my university abroad, at 25 a life partner and at 29 a name for my baby. They happened, just like that. If I remember correctly, I put minimum effort into any of those. Everything just fell into place and I just had to walk the talk.

At 36, I have done so much in my life past that I can actually look back and call out incidents by the year and sometimes even month. I always wondered how my grand relatives did that. I remember a grand uncle telling me a story about how he was just-out-of-teenage boy on a ship going to a concentration camp in Poland as a POW. He had the exact date, number of people aboard, and the weather conditions detailed out to us. I could not even remember what I had for dinner the previous night. I have surely matured now, because I can say I how sad I felt leaving India on the 4th of July 2000 to come to US or how I felt after I graduated in 2002 unsure of what lied ahead.

None of these came to my head until I got into bed last night and G asked me to massage his tennis elbow. I refused saying that my hand was hurting and so was my ankle. We both laughed, "we are falling apart, one thing at a time." This morning I walked into my closet and saw that we had collected every sort of brace that is available in the market. There were two knee braces, two ankle braces, two compression bands, one arm brace, and two back braces. They all lay there thrown together for the emergency situation, which unfortunately seemed to happen more often that we would like. It just confirmed, that we were breaking down, one joint at a time. Both G and I have used all the braces at least once in the past 3 to 4 months.

So, I guess, with age comes maturity but before that you fall apart.

From
Aged ART

Blogging!

Every time I look at the B on browser, I want to click and start typing away, like I used a few years ago. I would think about what I wanted to write, formulate it in my head and at the first chance in front of a computer I would be typing away. The last few years have been difficult to think of my blog. I try to revive it at least three times a year and then it falls asleep. I am slacking at marking milestones in my life for my child to read back.

I have tons of unfinished posts sitting in my folder. I loose interest half way through. I feel bad and I want to continue...but then I realized that most of them are rants. Rants about people in Facebook, about people in real life, situations in real life, life in general and such on. I think the minute I start typing it out, I feel better and realize that it is of no use any more. The main idea to rant publicly is to get rid of the bad negative energy.  If you are able to do it before you publish it then what more do you need? I have accomplished Zen through writing half unpublished posts in my blog.

So the Zen me has no reason to blog. There is a lot of happiness around me not just an angry me. The happiness is a feeling. I try to verbalize it writing posts about how glorious my Diwali was or my daughter's birthday was but it cannot be expressed to its full impact.What is the point then? My happiness is mine and mine only but my rant could be yours too.

For example, today my friend posted about how she dislikes Mason Jars and that she is done with them...OMG...that is exactly my same feeling. I liked her post and expressed my ire towards the bane of jars. I could agree or disagree with her rant but when someone posts about how happy their kids birthday was or their rocking life, all we can do is do a "like" and keep moving. Somewhere in the back of your head, you hear a little voice say, "bragger."

Oh well...this does not mean that I will stop ranting or bragging...they will continue, but a Zen pace now. I could be calling my laziness Zen, either way it is good.

Happy Blogging Y'all

Love
ART

Shut the Front Door - School Already???

Sunday night I furiously worked on painting a sign for my little first grader. I had to have it ready for her to strike a pose with on Monday morning while she steps onto another milestone. Yup...first grader already and our life is zipping past us in comet speed. We did the "meet the teacher" and B who shows less emotions when I am searching for one did not disappoint me and acted cool while she waved hello to her teacher. After the meeting she also told me that, she has to wait and see before she says anything about the teacher. That is how the school year began and we are looking at 150 plus days of happiness, sadness, excitement, and not so much ahead of us.

Bubs has never known what it is to stay at home and not be in school on weekdays. Yes, the choice we made for her was to be in day care so that her parents could work. Not the ideal one but it is one we have all made peace with. There is an occasional "why me?" but that is expected from us going through mundane frustrations. B to most part has never fussed about school, one day here and one evening there she would complain but she has always reticently walked out of the car and into the various day cares. I have never heard complaints and she was always a happy well adjusted kid.

In the daycare world care professionals rarely complained because there is not much expected in terms of results. The kid can play, study or do nothing and yet everything they do will be counted as a milestone. To give an example, a child who decided to hold pen after five days or persuasion will be called a genius and the parents are also made to feel excited. School, on the other hand is not the same. This is the ground zero for child personality development. The coy kid becomes brash, the loud one is the quietest and the smart one forgets that it can have a voice. Things change here and drastically so on a daily basis. Every day as I drop her off, my heart wrenches for the hours she will be spent where there will be fewer kind words and more stress on following orders. This will be the place where she will be pitted against other kids and parents will fight for attention from teacher so that their child can shine. A kind of place where you really do not enjoy much until you are old enough to get away with small silly things you share with your friends on the sly.

For me, it was high school when I started to enjoy school. We would hide in the cafeteria to avoid classesor would sneak out to eat "chocobar" at the canteen during a boring hour. We enjoyed Physics lab the most because most of us could take a nap as the teacher was too lazy to move. Chem lab was another story, we would finish the experiment in ten minutes and have two hours to sit and chat. Exams were serious but school life was enjoyable. I hope for B that she enjoys at least a little of her Elementary life unlike me. She has a spirit, an enthu to enjoy, a need for fun and laughter, which I hope does not get drowned in the monotony of school and homework. I do not want to see her come home sad or disappointed.

Today, as I dropped her off at school I told her, "B remember, everyday tell yourself that school is Awesome and it will be so." B replied, "Yes amma, school is Awesomely Boring." Just like her dad!

Love you B
Amma!!!

The Grind

Work 10-12 hours a day
Home 8-12 hours a day
ETC - the remaining time

This is life on a weekday.

Classes 4 hours a day (drive time included)
Random Party 4 hours
Home improvement 4 hours
Sleep 8 hours
Random things - the remaining time

This is life on a weekend.

My life seems to be on a schedule. On Friday evenings I am excited to go home but before I get home I am tired from the past week. I make plans with G to drink, watch a movie, and veg out and the only thing I accomplish is vegging out on the sofa watching a TV program that was recorded two weeks ago. Of course we never get to finish the program because the two of us are stretching it out on our respective sofas. At approximately 2am I realize that I have a strained neck and wake up feeling that I am in a strange place and slowly migrate to the bed. And the weekend begins.

God forbid I make plans to hang out with friends, I am out of the zone. I am constantly thinking of how to juggle Sanjana's weekend classes with the various other commitments and how to do something at home and something for work. Nothing goes per plan and I am running helter skelter like a moron who lost his hat while it is still on her head.

The vacation was a good break. It removed me from the routine and put me onto a different grind. One that I definitely think has better prospects than my life. I sit down with a cup of coffee and remember our Romanian friends coffee in Paris. I wear a pair of pants and I think about walking in it through the streets of Barcelona. Pair of slippers remind me of what a pain they were in Pisa and my sun glasses remind me of how they were both glasses as well as hair band through the trip. We made memories and I believe that is how you measure the success of your vacation. You have a longing to go back, you are back in the present but the past is still keeping you engaged.

Do not mistake me as I am not complaining. I like the routine, I like things to go per plan. I make plans and I try real hard to stick by them. For a person like me, the Grind is security. Once in a while a bump in that grind is what makes my life interesting!

Love
Tired ART